| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Critias by Plato: I will now describe the plain, as it was fashioned by nature and by the
labours of many generations of kings through long ages. It was for the
most part rectangular and oblong, and where falling out of the straight
line followed the circular ditch. The depth, and width, and length of this
ditch were incredible, and gave the impression that a work of such extent,
in addition to so many others, could never have been artificial.
Nevertheless I must say what I was told. It was excavated to the depth of
a hundred feet, and its breadth was a stadium everywhere; it was carried
round the whole of the plain, and was ten thousand stadia in length. It
received the streams which came down from the mountains, and winding round
the plain and meeting at the city, was there let off into the sea. Further
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The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Iron Puddler by James J. Davis: man's instinct for fraternity was a great reservoir of social
energy which, if harnessed aright, could lift our civilization
nearer to perfection.
On the night of my election and initiation to membership, the
Supreme Lodge was in convention and they requested me to make a
talk. I suggested a scheme to save the wastage of child life
resulting from the death of parents and the scattering of their
babies; and also to provide for the widows and aged. This problem
had haunted me from boyhood when, as I have told, I was the
bearer of death news to the widows and orphans of the mill town.
I felt that the Loyal Order of Moose could cope with this
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The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Meno by Plato: later Platonic Dialogues, the Meno arrives at no conclusion. Hence we are
led to place the Dialogue at some point of time later than the Protagoras,
and earlier than the Phaedrus and Gorgias. The place which is assigned to
it in this work is due mainly to the desire to bring together in a single
volume all the Dialogues which contain allusions to the trial and death of
Socrates.
...
ON THE IDEAS OF PLATO.
Plato's doctrine of ideas has attained an imaginary clearness and
definiteness which is not to be found in his own writings. The popular
account of them is partly derived from one or two passages in his Dialogues
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